11 Picky Eaters of the Animal Kingdom

When you’re fighting for survival in the wild, it pays to have highly adapted eating habits and a multitude of food options. While most animals subsist on a variety of foods, some still have very narrow palates and live off one main source of nutrition. Click through to read about some of the pickiest eaters in the animal kingdom.

About 99 percent of the giant panda’s daily diet consists of nothing but the leaves and stems of bamboo plants, which are indigenous to its home in the forests of China. Because bamboo has very little nutritional value, the panda must consume up to 40 pounds of bamboo a day to maintain proper nutrition. Eating bamboo is also no easy task. The stalks of the plant are thick and hard, but the panda has adapted large molar teeth and strong jaws for crushing and masticating the plant. The animal also gets most of its water from eating bamboo, though it must also drink from streams. Pandas are extremely dependent on bamboo and must live in areas where bamboo is abundant. They are very vulnerable to habitat loss and have difficulty bouncing back due to an unusually show birth rate.

This little bird feeds primarily on the nectar of flowering plants. A hummingbird’s metabolism is extremely high, so the animals must constantly feed on nectar for energy. Hummingbirds also feed on insects for protein, but it’s the nectar that keeps their tiny wings flapping at 60-200 beats per second, depending on the hummingbird species. The birds use their long, thin beaks to get deep inside a flower where the nectar is stored. Their tiny tongues dart out and lap up the nectar while the bird is hovering. Because they spend most of their time flying, hummingbirds have poorly developed feet and can’t walk. They can perch, however, and take short breaks between feedings.

These tree-dwelling marsupials are found in eastern Australia and feed mainly on eucalyptus leaves. An adult koala consumes around two and a half pounds of leaves a day, mainly eating at night. The animal also gets most of its water intake from these leaves. In fact, the koala loves eucalyptus so much it rarely leaves the treetops. The koala’s specialized digestive system allows the animal to break down the leaves without being affected by their toxins. The koala has a very slow metabolic rate due to the lack of nutrition found in eucalyptus leaves.

Vultures dine on carrion (aka decaying animal flesh). These large birds of prey prefer to let other animals take care of the actual hunting and killing. Instead, they spend hours gliding in the sky in search of food. They swoop in when a predator has finished its meal and feast on the leftover carcass. While it may seem like a disgusting existence, vultures play an important role in the circle of life and help clean up the mess predators leave behind. Their featherless heads give them a homely appearance, but this lack of feathers helps them stay clean and free of infection while feasting on decaying meat. They also have a highly adapted immune system that keeps them from becoming ill after eating decomposing flesh.

This large species of sea turtle weighs up to 1,000 pounds and feeds mainly on jellyfish in the cold waters of the open ocean. They can be found around the world, migrating from subtropical waters during nesting season, to other areas of the globe when searching for food. Sea turtles have adapted an immunity to the painful and toxic sting of a jellyfish, allowing them to feast easily on the otherwise helpless creatures. The turtle’s thick, sharp upper and lower jaws easily pierce through the soft body of the jellyfish. Unfortunately, sea turtles have been known to mistakenly ingest plastic bags floating in the ocean, thinking they are jellyfish.

Talk about a specialized diet: The snail kite feeds almost entirely on apple snails in its habitat in the Everglades of Florida. This species of kite has a highly adapted beak with a long, sharp point that is ideal for pulling the snail out of its shell for consumption. The kite hunts by flying overhead and spotting snails from the sky. It then plunges downs and grabs a snail with its talons, never using its beak to grab prey. Because it’s dependent on this one food source, the kite is vulnerable to both habitat loss and water quality changes in the watersheds it inhabits.

Beautiful monarch butterflies feed on the nectar of flowers, but in their caterpillar stage they survive solely on the leaves of the toxic milkweed plant. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on this plant, so when the eggs hatch, their young are surrounded by their nourishment of choice. The leaves of the milkweed plant contain cardenolides, which are toxic to most other animals. The caterpillars are immune to the toxins and instead store the toxins in their bodies, rendering them also toxic to predators.

These small weasel-like creatures look like they’re wearing bank robber masks for a good reason. Black-footed ferrets prey on prairie dogs by hunting them down in their burrows and then taking up residence in the abandoned tunnels. Though these ferrets also eat mice and other rodents, the prairie dog is essential to its survival. This species of ferret has become endangered largely because of farmers’ effort to rid their land of prairie dogs, due to the latter's destructive tunneling.

The blue whale might be the largest mammal on Earth, but it feeds solely on one of the smallest crustaceans found in the ocean. Blue whales eat krill, which resemble tiny shrimp and are found swimming together in massive swarms. The 100-foot-long blue whale must ingest tens of millions of these krill daily to maintain its diet. To feed, the whale expands its throat and takes in a huge mouthful of krill and water. It uses its massive tongue to trap the krill inside while it pushes out the water through its mouth. A blue whale has a unique filtration system in its mouth called baleen, which allows the animal to express this water without losing the krill it has trapped inside.

Pen-tailed treeshrews spend most of their lives hanging out on vines and branches in the rainforests of Thailand, Malaysia and Borneo. They’re nocturnal and feed on the naturally fermented nectar of the bertam palm. This nectar reaches up to 3.8 percent alcohol, the highest percentage of alcohol found in a natural food. To put it in perspective, a pen-tailed treeshrew consumes in a day the equivalent of a human drinking about nine glasses of wine in 12 hours. Amazingly, the treeshrew shows no signs of intoxication after consuming the nectar, leaving scientists to believe they’ve adapted a unique way of metabolizing the alcohol.

As the name implies, this species of snake eats only bird eggs and nothing else. The African egg-eating snake has evolved a unique method of consuming its meal. Thanks to highly flexible jaws, the snake is able to maneuver its mouth — and then its neck — around an entire egg. Once the egg is fully engulfed, the snake flexes muscles in its neck that help push the egg against sharp bones in its spine. This action pierces the egg and releases the nutritional contents into the snake’s stomach. Once the egg has been emptied, the snake spits out the shell.